Constitutions of Clarendon (the provisions of which are then given).Q. Did Henry II try to improve the government of the country or not?A. Yes, throughout his busy reign he never forgot his work of reforming thelaw. The itinerant justices grew in importance, and not only settled moneymatters in the counties as at ?rst, but heard pleas and judged cases. It is toHenry II’s reforms that we owe the ?rst clear beginnings of trial by jury.The murder of Becket is not mentioned. The execution of Charles I is men-tioned, but not blamed.She remained unmarried, having once become engaged to a curate andsu?ered from insane delusions during her engagement, which led to itsbeing broken o?. She became a miser, living in a large house, but using fewof the rooms in order to save coal, and only having a bath once a week for thesame reason. She wore thick woollen stockings which were always comingdown in rumples over her ankles, and at most times talked sentimentallyabout the extreme goodness of certain people and the extreme wickedness ofcertain others, both equally imaginary. Both in my brother’s case and inmine, she hated our wives so long as we lived with them, but loved themafterwards. When I ?rst took my second wife to see her, she put a photographof my ?rst wife on the mantelpiece, and said to my second wife: ‘When I seeyou I cannot help thinking of dear Alys, and wondering what would happenshould Bertie desert you, which God forbid.’ My brother said to her once:‘Auntie, you are always a wife behind.’ This remark, instead of angeringher, sent her into ?ts of laughter, and she repeated it to everybody. Those whothought her sentimental and doddering were liable to be surprised by asudden outburst of shrewdness and wit. She was a victim of my grand-mother’s virtue. If she had not been taught that sex is wicked, she might havebeen happy, successful, and able.My brother was seven years older than I was, and therefore not much ofa companion to me. Except in holiday time he was away at school. I admiredhim in the way natural to a younger brother, and was always delighted whenhe returned at the beginning of the holidays, but after a few days I began towish the holidays were over. He teased me, and bullied me mildly. I remem-ber once when I was six years old he called in a loud voice: ‘Baby!’ With greatdignity I refused to take any notice, considering that this was not my name.He afterwards informed me that he had had a bunch of grapes which hewould have given me if I had come. As I was never in any circumstancesallowed to eat any fruit at all, this deprivation was rather serious. There wasalso a certain small bell which I believed to be mine, but which he at eachreturn asserted to be his and took from me, although he was himself too oldto derive any pleasure from it. He still had it when he was grown-up, andchildhood 15I never saw it without angry feelings. My father and mother, as appears fromtheir letters to each other, had considerable trouble with him, but at any ratemy mother understood him, as he was in character and appearance a Stanley.The Russells never understood him at all, and regarded him from the ?rst as alimb of Satan.2Not unnaturally, ?nding himself so viewed, he set out to liveup to his reputation. Attempts were made to keep him away from me, whichI resented as soon as I became aware of them. His personality was, however,very overpowering, and after I had been with him some time I began to feelas if I could not breathe. I retained throughout his life an attitude towardshim consisting of a?ection mixed with fear. He passionately longed to beloved, but was such a bully that he never could keep the love of anyone.When he lost anyone’s love, his heart was wounded and he became cruel andunscrupulous, but all his worst actions sprang from sentimental causes.During my early years at Pembroke Lodge the servants played a larger partin my life than the family did. There was an old housekeeper named Mrs Coxwho had been my grandmother’s nurserymaid when my grandmother was achild. She was straight and vigorous and strict and devoted to the family andalways nice to me. There was a butler named MacAlpine who was veryScotch. He used to take me on his knee and read me accounts of railwayaccidents in the newspaper. As soon as I saw him I always climbed up on himand said: ‘Tell me about an accident-happen.’ Then there was a French cooknamed Michaud, who was rather terrifying, but in spite of her awe-inspiringqualities I could not resist going to the kitchen to see the roast meat turningon the old-fashioned spit, and to steal lumps of salt, which I liked better thansugar, out of the salt box. She would pursue me with a carving knife, butI always escaped easily. Out-of-doors there was a gardener named MacRobieof whom I remember little as he left when I was ?ve years old, and the lodge-keeper and his wife, Mr and Mrs Singleton, of whom I was very fond, as theygave me baked apples and beer, both of which were strictly forbidden.MacRobie was succeeded by a gardener named Vidler, who informed me thatthe English are the lost Ten Tribes, though I do not think I quite believed him.When I ?rst came to Pembroke Lodge, I had a German nursery governessnamed Miss Hetschel, and I already spoke German as ?uently as English. Sheleft a few days after my arrival at Pembroke Lodge, and was succeeded by aGerman nurse named Wilhelmina, or Mina for short. I remember vividly the?rst evening when she bathed me, when I considered it prudent to makemyself sti?, as I did not know what she might be up to. She ?nally had tocall in outside assistance, as I frustrated all her e?orts. Very soon, however,I became devoted to her. She taught me to write German letters. I remember,after learning all the German capitals and all the German small letters, sayingto her: ‘Now it only remains to learn the numbers’, and being relieved andsurprised to ?nd that they were the same in German. She used to slap methe autobiography of bertrand russell 16occasionally, and I can remember crying when she did so, but it neveroccurred to me to regard her as less of a friend on that account. She was withme until I was six years old. During her time I also had a nursery maid calledAda who used to light the ?re in the morning while I lay in bed. She wouldwait till the sticks were blazing and then put on coal. I always wished shewould not put on coal, as I loved the crackle and brightness of the burningwood. The nurse slept in the same room with me, but never, so far as myrecollection serves me, either dressed or undressed. Freudians may makewhat they like of this.In the matter of food, all through my youth I was treated in a very Spartanmanner, much more so, in fact, than is now considered compatible withgood health. There was an old French lady living in Richmond, namedMadame D’Etchegoyen, a niece of Talleyrand, who used to give me largeboxes of the most delicious chocolates. Of these I was allowed only one onSundays, but Sundays and week-days alike I had to hand them round to thegrown-ups. I was very fond of crumbling my bread into my gravy, which Iwas allowed to do in the nursery, but not in the dining-room. I used often tohave a sleep before my dinner, and if I slept late I had dinner in the nursery,but if I woke up in time I had it in the dining-room. I used to pretend to sleeplate in order to have dinner in the nursery. At last they suspected that I waspretending, and one day, as I was lying in my bed, they poked me about. Imade myself quite sti?, imagining that was how people would be if theywere asleep, but to my dismay I heard them saying: ‘He is not asleep, becausehe is making himself sti?.’ No one ever discovered why I had pretended to beasleep. I remember an occasion at lunch when all the plates were changed andeverybody except me was given an orange. I was not allowed an orange asthere was an unalterable conviction that fruit is bad for children. I knew Imust not ask for one as that would be impertinent, but as I had been given aplate I did venture to say, ‘a plate and nothing on it’. Everybody laughed, butI did not get an orange. I had no fruit, practically no sugar, and an excess ofcarbohydrates. Nevertheless, I never had a day’s illness except a mild attack ofmeasles at the age of eleven. Since I became interested in children, after thebirth of my own children, I have never known one nearly as healthy as I was,and yet I am sure that any modern expert on children’s diet would think thatI ought to have had various de?ciency diseases. Perhaps I was saved by thepractice of stealing crabapples, which, if it had been known, would havecaused the utmost horror and alarm. A similar instinct for self-preservationwas the cause of my ?rst lie. My governess left me alone for half an hour withstrict instructions to eat no blackberries during her absence. When shereturned I was suspiciously near the brambles. ‘You have been eating black-berries’, she said. ‘I have not’, I replied. ‘Put out your tongue!’ she said.Shame overwhelmed me, and I felt utterly wicked.childhood 17I was, in fact, unusually prone to a sense of sin. When asked what was myfavourite hymn, I answered ‘Weary of earth and laden with my sin’. On oneoccasion when my grandmother read the parable of the Prodigal Son atfamily prayers, I said to her afterwards: ‘I know why you read that – becauseI broke my jug.’ She used to relate the anecdote in after years with amuse-ment, not realising that she was responsible for a morbidness which hadproduced tragic results in her own children.Many of my most vivid early memories are of humiliations. In the summerof 1877 my grandparents rented from the Archbishop of Canterbury a housenear Broadstairs, called Stone House. The journey by train seemed to meenormously long, and after a time I began to think that we must have reachedScotland, so I said: ‘What country are we in now?’ They all laughed at me andsaid: ‘Don’t you know you cannot get out of England without crossing thesea?’ I did not venture to explain, and was left overwhelmed with shame.While we were there I went down to the sea one afternoon with my grand-mother and my Aunt Agatha. I had on a new pair of boots, and the last thingmy nurse said to me as I went out was: ‘Take care not to get your boots wet!’But the in-coming tide caught me on a rock, and my grandmother and AuntAgatha told me to wade through the water to the shore. I would not do so,and my aunt had to wade through and carry me. They supposed that thiswas through fear, and I never told them of my nurse’s prohibition, butaccepted meekly the lecture on cowardice which resulted.In the main, however, the time that I spent at Stone House was verydelightful. I remember the North Foreland, which I believed to be one of thefour corners of England, since I imagined at that time that England was arectangle. I remember the ruins at Richborough which greatly interested me,and the camera obscura at Ramsgate, which interested me still more. I rememberwaving corn-?elds which, to my regret, had disappeared when I returned tothe neighbourhood thirty years later. I remember, of course, all the usualdelights of the seaside – limpets, and sea-anemones, and rocks, and sands,and ?shermen’s boats, and lighthouses. I was impressed by the fact thatlimpets stick to the rock when one tries to pull them o?, and I said to myAunt Agatha, ‘Aunty, do limpets think?’ To which she answered, ‘I don’tknow’. ‘Then you must learn’, I rejoined. I do not clearly remember theincident which ?rst brought me into contact with my friend Whitehead.I had been told that the earth was round, and had refused to believe it. Mypeople thereupon called in the vicar of the parish to persuade me, and ithappened that he was Whitehead’s father. Under clerical guidance, I adoptedthe orthodox view and began to dig a hole to the Antipodes. This incident,however, I know only from hearsay.While at Broadstairs I was taken to see Sir Moses Monte?ore, an old andmuch revered Jew who lived in the neighbourhood. (According to thethe autobiography of bertrand russell 18Encyclopaedia, he had retired in 1824.) This was the ?rst time I becameaware of the existence of Jews outside the Bible. My people explained to mecarefully, before taking me to see the old man, how much he deserved to beadmired, and how abominable had been the former disabilities of Jews,which he and my grandfather had done much to remove. On this occasionthe impression made by my grandmother’s teaching was clear, but on otheroccasions I was puzzled. She was a ?erce Little Englander, and disapprovedstrongly of Colonial wars. She told me that the Zulu War was very wicked,and that it was largely the fault of Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of the Cape.Nevertheless, when Sir Bartle Frere came to live at Wimbledon, she took meto see him, and I observed that she did not treat him as a monster. I found thisvery di?cult to understand.My grandmother used to read aloud to me, chie?y the stories of MariaEdgeworth. There was one story in the book, called The False Key, which shesaid was not a very nice story, and she would therefore not read it to me.I read the whole story, a sentence at a time, in the course of bringing thebook from the shelf to my grandmother. Her attempts to prevent me fromknowing things were seldom successful. At a somewhat later date, during SirCharles Dilke’s very scandalous divorce case, she took the precaution of burn-ing the newspapers every day, but I used to go to the Park gates to fetch themfor her, and read every word of the divorce case before the papers reached her.The case interested me the more because I had once been to church withhim, and I kept wondering what his feelings had been when he heard theSeventh Commandment. After I had learnt to read ?uently I used to readto her, and I acquired in this way an extensive knowledge of standard Englishliterature. I read with her Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Cowper’s Task,Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, Jane Austen, and hosts of other books.There is a good description of the atmosphere of Pembroke Lodge inA Victorian Childhood by Annabel Huth Jackson (née Grant Du?). Her father wasSir Mountstuart Grant Du?, and the family lived in a large house at Twicken-ham. She and I were friends from the age of four until she died during thesecond world war. It was from her that I ?rst heard of Verlaine, Dostoevsky,the German Romantics, and many other people of literary eminence. But it isof an earlier period that her reminiscences treat. She says:My only boy friend was Bertrand Russell, who with his grandmother old LadyRussell, Lord John’s widow, lived at Pembroke Lodge, in Richmond Park.Bertie and I were great allies and I had an immense secret admiration for hisbeautiful and gifted elder brother Frank. Frank, I am sorry to say, sympathisedwith my brother’s point of view about little girls and used to tie me up to treesby my hair. But Bertie, a solemn little boy in a blue velvet suit with an equallysolemn governess, was always kind, and I greatly enjoyed going to tea atchildhood 19Pembroke Lodge. But even as a child I realised what an unsuitable place itwas for children to be brought up in. Lady Russell always spoke in hushedtones and Lady Agatha always wore a white shawl and looked down-trodden.Rollo Russell never spoke at all. He gave one a handshake that nearly brokeall the bones of one’s ?ngers, but was quite friendly. They all drifted in andout of the rooms like ghosts and no one ever seemed to be hungry. It was acurious bringing up for two young and extraordinarily gifted boys.Throughout the greater part of my childhood, the most important hours ofmy day were those that I spent alone in the garden, and the most vivid part ofmy existence was solitary. I seldom mentioned my more serious thoughts toothers, and when I did I regretted it. I knew each corner of the garden, andlooked year by year for the white primroses in one place, the redstart’s nest inanother, the blossom of the acacia emerging from a tangle of ivy. I knewwhere the earliest blue-bells were to be found, and which of the oaks cameinto leaf soonest. I remember that in the year 1878 a certain oak tree was inleaf as early as the fourteenth of April. My window looked out upon twoLombardy poplars, each about a hundred feet high, and I used to watch theshadow of the house creeping up them as the sun set. In the morning I wokevery early and sometimes saw Venus rise. On one occasion I mistook theplanet for a lantern in the wood. I saw the sunrise on most mornings, and onbright April days I would sometimes slip out of the house for a long walkbefore breakfast. I watched the sunset turn the earth red and the cloudsgolden; I listened to the wind, and exulted in the lightning. Throughout mychildhood I had an increasing sense of loneliness, and of despair of evermeeting anyone with whom I could talk. Nature and books and (later) math-ematics saved me from complete despondency.The early years of my childhood, however, were happy and it was only asadolescence approached that loneliness became oppressive. I had govern-esses, German and Swiss, whom I liked, and my intelligence was not yetsu?ciently developed to su?er from the de?ciency of my people in thisrespect. I must, however, have felt some kind of unhappiness, as I rememberwishing that my parents had lived. Once, when I was six years old, Iexpressed this feeling to my grandmother, and she proceeded to tell me that itwas very fortunate for me that they had died. At the time her remarks made adisagreeable impression upon me and I attributed them to jealousy. I did not,of course, know that from a Victorian point of view there was ample groundfor them. My grandmother’s face was very expressive, and in spite of all herexperience of the great world she never learned the art of concealing heremotions. I noticed that any allusion to insanity caused her a spasm ofanguish, and I speculated much as to the reason. It was only many years laterthat I discovered she had a son in an asylum. He was in a smart regiment, andthe autobiography of bertrand russell 20went mad after a few years of it. The story that I have been told, thoughI cannot vouch for its complete accuracy, is that his brother o?cers teasedhim because he was chaste. They kept a bear as a regimental pet, and one day,for sport, set the bear at him. He ?ed, lost his memory, and being foundwandering about the country was put in a workhouse in?rmary, his identitybeing unknown. In the middle of the night, he jumped up shouting ‘thebear! – the bear!’ and strangled a tramp in the next bed. He never recoveredhis memory, but lived till over eighty.When I try to recall as much as I can of early childhood, I ?nd that the ?rstthing I remember after my arrival at Pembroke Lodge is walking in meltingsnow, in warm sunshine, on an occasion which must have been about amonth later, and noticing a large fallen beech tree which was being sawn intologs. The next thing I remember is my fourth birthday, on which I was givena trumpet which I blew all day long, and had tea with a birthday cake in asummer-house. The next thing that I remember is my aunt’s lessons oncolours and reading, and then, very vividly, the kindergarten class whichbegan just before I was ?ve and continued for about a year and a half. Thatgave me very intense delight. The shop from which the apparatus came wasstated on the lids to be in Berners Street, Oxford Street, and to this day, unlessI pull myself together, I think of Berners Street as a sort of Aladdin’s Palace. Atthe kindergarten class I got to know other children, most of whom I havelost sight of. But I met one of them, Jimmie Baillie, in 1929 at Vancouver asI stepped out of the train. I realise now that the good lady who taught us hadhad an orthodox Froebel training, and was at that time amazingly up-to-date.I can still remember almost all the lessons in detail, but I think what thrilledme most was the discovery that yellow and blue paints made green.When I was just six my grandfather died, and shortly afterwards we wentto St Fillans in Perthshire for the summer. I remember the funny old inn withknobbly wooden door-posts, the wooden bridge over the river, the rockybays on the lake, and the mountain opposite. My recollection is that the timethere was one of great happiness. My next recollection is less pleasant. It isthat of a room in London at No. 8, Chesham Place, where my governessstormed at me while I endeavoured to learn the multiplication table but wascontinually impeded by tears. My grandmother took a house in London forsome months when I was seven years old, and it was then that I began to seemore of my mother’s family. My mother’s father was dead, but my mother’smother, Lady Stanley of Alderley, lived in a large house, No 40, Dover Street,3with her daughter Maude. I was frequently taken to lunch with her, andthough the food was delicious, the pleasure was doubtful, as she had a caustictongue, and spared neither age nor sex. I was always consumed with shynesswhile in her presence, and as none of the Stanleys were shy, this irritated her.I used to make desperate endeavours to produce a good impression, but theychildhood 21would fail in ways that I could not have foreseen. I remember telling her thatI had grown 2? inches in the last seven months, and that at that rate I shouldgrow 42/ 7 inches in a year. ‘Don’t you know’, she said, ‘that you shouldnever talk about any fractions except halves and quarters? – it is pedantic!’‘I know it now’, I replied. ‘How like his father!’ she said, turning to my AuntMaude. Somehow or other, as in this incident, my best e?orts always wentastray. Once when I was about twelve years old, she had me before a roomfulof visitors, and asked me whether I had read a whole string of books onpopular science which she enumerated. I had read none of them. At the endshe sighed, and turning to the visitors, said: ‘I have no intelligent grand-children.’ She was an eighteenth-century type, rationalistic and unimagina-tive, keen on enlightenment, and contemptuous of Victorian goody-goodypriggery. She was one of the principal people concerned in the foundation ofGirton College, and her portrait hangs in Girton Hall, but her policies wereabandoned at her death. ‘So long as I live’, she used to say, ‘there shall beno chapel at Girton.’ The present chapel began to be built the day she died.As soon as I reached adolescence she began to try to counteract what sheconsidered namby-pamby in my upbringing. She would say: ‘Nobody can sayanything against me, but I always say that it is not so bad to break the SeventhCommandment as the Sixth, because at any rate it requires the consent of theother party.’ I pleased her greatly on one occasion by asking for Tristram Shandyas a birthday present. She said: ‘I won’t write in it, because people will saywhat an odd grandmother you have!’ Nevertheless she did write in it. It wasan autographed ?rst edition. This is the only occasion I can remember onwhich I succeeded in pleasing her.She had a considerable contempt for everything that she regarded as silly.On her birthday she always had a dinner-party of thirteen, and made themost superstitious member of the party go out ?rst. I remember once ana?ected granddaughter of hers came to see her, bringing a lap dog whichannoyed my grandmother by barking. Her granddaughter protested that thedog was an angel. ‘Angel? – angel?’ said my grandmother indignantly. ‘Whatnonsense! Do you think he has a soul?’ ‘Yes, grandmama’, replied the youngwoman pluckily. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, during which hergranddaughter remained with her, she informed each visitor in turn: ‘Whatdo you think that silly girl Grisel says? She says dogs have souls.’ It was herpractice to sit in her large drawing-room every afternoon while streams ofvisitors, including the most eminent writers of the time, came to tea. Whenany of them left the room, she would turn to the others with a sigh and say:‘Fools are so fatiguin.’ She had been brought up as a Jacobite, her familybeing Irish Dillons, who ?ed to France after the Battle of the Boyne and had aprivate regiment of their own in the French army. The French Revolutionreconciled them to Ireland, but my grandmother was brought up in Florence,the autobiography of bertrand russell 22where her father was Minister. In Florence she used to go once a week to visitthe widow of the Young Pretender. She used to say that the only thing sheregarded as stupid about her ancestors was their having been Jacobites.I never knew my maternal grandfather, but I heard it said that he used tobrow-beat my grandmother, and felt that, if so, he must have been a veryremarkable man.4She had an enormous family of sons and daughters, mostof whom came to lunch with her every Sunday. Her eldest son was aMohammedan, and almost stone deaf. Her second son, Lyulph, was a free-thinker, and spent his time ?ghting the Church on the London School Board.Her third son, Algernon, was a Roman Catholic priest, a Papal Chamberlainand Bishop of Emmaus. Lyulph was witty, encyclopaedic, and caustic.Algernon was witty, fat, and greedy. Henry, the Mohammedan, was devoid ofall the family merits, and was, I think, the greatest bore I have ever known. Inspite of his deafness, he insisted upon hearing everything said to him. At theSunday luncheons there would be vehement arguments, for among thedaughters and sons-in-law there were representatives of the Church ofEngland, Unitarianism, and Positivism, to be added to the religions repre-sented by the sons. When the argument reached a certain pitch of ferocity,Henry would become aware that there was a noise, and would ask what it wasabout. His nearest neighbour would shout a biased version of the argumentinto his ear, whereupon all the others would shout ‘No, no, Henry, it isn’tthat!’ At this point the din became truly terri?c. A favourite trick of my UncleLyulph at Sunday luncheons was to ask: ‘Who is there here who believes inthe literal truth of the story of Adam and Eve?’ His object in asking thequestion was to compel the Mohammedan and the priest to agree with eachother, which they hated doing. I used to go to these luncheons in fear andtrembling, since I never knew but what the whole pack would turn upon me.I had only one friend whom I could count on among them, and she was nota Stanley by birth. She was my Uncle Lyulph’s wife, sister of Sir Hugh Bell. Mygrandmother always considered herself very broad-minded because she hadnot objected to Lyulph marrying into what she called ‘trade’, but as Sir Hughwas a multi-millionaire I was not very much impressed.Formidable as my grandmother was, she had her limits. Once whenMr Gladstone was expected to tea, she told us all beforehand how she wasgoing to explain to him exactly in what respects his Home Rule policy wasmistaken. I was present throughout his visit, but not one word of criticismdid she utter. His hawk’s eye could quell even her. Her son-in-law, LordCarlisle, told me of an even more humiliating episode which occurred atNaworth Castle on one occasion when she was staying there. Burne-Jones,who was also staying there, had a tobacco pouch which was made to look likea tortoise. There was also a real tortoise, which strayed one day by mistakeinto the library. This suggested a prank to the younger generation. Duringchildhood 23dinner, Burne-Jones’s tobacco pouch was placed near the drawing-room ?re,and when the ladies returned from dinner it was dramatically discovered thatthis time the tortoise had got into the drawing-room. On its being picked up,somebody exclaimed with astonishment that its back had grown soft. LordCarlisle fetched from the library the appropriate volume of the Encyclo-paedia, and read out a pretended passage saying that great heat sometimeshad this e?ect. My grandmother expressed the greatest interest in this factof natural history, and frequently alluded to it on subsequent occasions.Many years later, when she was quarrelling with Lady Carlisle about HomeRule, her daughter maliciously told her the truth of this incident. My grand-mother retorted: ‘I may be many things, but I am not a fool, and I refuse tobelieve you.’My brother, who had the Stanley temperament, loved the Stanleys andhated the Russells. I loved the Russells and feared the Stanleys. As I havegrown older, however, my feelings have changed. I owe to the Russellsshyness, sensitiveness, and metaphysics; to the Stanleys vigour, good health,and good spirits. On the whole, the latter seems a better inheritance than theformer.Reverting to what I can remember of childhood, the next thing that isvivid in my memory is the winter of 1880–81, which we spent at Bourne-